Scratch Night
Theatre workshop / Performance
November 2025
We’d been wanting to bring theatre to the Girvan Arts Festival for some time, and when local drama graduate Frazer Kirkland approached us through our patron, top Scottish playwright and fellow Girvanite, Douglas Maxwell, it seemed the perfect time.
Frazer came up with the idea of doing a Scratch Night, a cross between a theatre workshop and a performance, where budding playwrights get to see a short piece of their work performed by actors in front of an audience, with a chance for the writers to receive feedback on their work from the audience, the actors, and the director.
We commissioned Frazer to produce and direct the event and he himself acted in a few of the plays, joined by local actor Calum Muir and actress Gaynor Goldie, and Una McDade, Graeme Cobb and Emma Harkness.
The Hunger Feed by Charlie McNally.
After the interval, with Douglas Maxwell’s kind permission, the cast performed a couple of pieces of his own work, Like a hobby or something, a short sex comedy, and Fatbaws, a hilarious monologue about murder and deceit around the birdtable!
We hope that scratch nights may become a regular event on Girvan’s calendar, and it will hopefully open the way to bring a few plays to Girvan over the coming years.
Frazer Kirkland studied acting at Glasgow Clyde College for 3 years , graduating in the summer of 2024. Since then he has been cast in a number of short films and was most recently in a play with Short Attention Span Theatre at the Gaiety, followed by a rural tour.
As well as having an interest in writing, Frazer had been part of a number of scratch nights in Glasgow. Whilst going along to these events, he noticed that there was a severe lack of opportunity for writers and actors across Ayrshire and hopes to bridge a gap with the connections he has made. With an increasing depth of writing and acting talent in Ayrshire, he hopes that these kind of nights can become a regular feature, attracting newcomers to both acting and playwriting.